


the shadows of starlight

by cassandor



Series: Finding Home [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: And a little bit of, Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Force-Sensitive Cassian Andor, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Past Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Post-Canon, Sappy Cassian is the best Cassian, They're older now though, not directly but if you Know you Know, reduced age gap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-10-26 10:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20740946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandor/pseuds/cassandor
Summary: War is a distant echo. To most, it's a fading memory of the past. To him, it's a reminder of the fragility of the present. To her, it's a quiet warning from the future.To the Force, it is all the same.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I got Carried Away and it's Mercy's fault for writing that Anidala & Cassleia fic.

Cassian crosses his arms and rests his head against the pillar behind him. A long day fades in the face of an even longer night, the latter sprawling ahead of him like the red carpet that's been unrolled for tonight's guests.

Not for him. 

He might've walked its length if he'd arrived with Leia's arm linked in his. But that would've meant their Naboo hosts had to arrange for twice the security - Leia's and Cassian's - _and _Leia would've had to wrangle him into a Core-styled suit of fabric tripping hazards and fasteners his calloused hands could never put together. Only take apart. 

He's more than comfortable in the jacket Leia gave him.

Not today - he hasn't properly talked to her in weeks. She gave it to him after Endor. Something nice, she'd told him, for the signings. He wanted to protest, said nobody was going to look at him when she was around. Then then he'd put it on. It's weight feels exactly like his brown Alliance jacket. It had pockets in all the right places and a full range of movement, and that was enough to put his mind at ease. Not to mention the warmth it brought - the smile Leia wore when she first saw him wear it willingly. 

It's familiar, wrapped in the echoes of the past both dead and living. Soothing despite - because - of all the ghosts it carries, so unlike any other reminder he's ever been given. 

A group of chattering guests passing by pulls him out of his reverie. This is no Core-world gala. He wouldn't be able to be here, like this, if it was. He'd have to be dressed properly as part of Leia's Alderaani entourage or in New Republic fatigues. He would've had to been at her side or as her shadow. Not this, whatever this was. An observer. An admirer. 

He watches beings of all species pass, dressed in whatever their cultures and preferences dictate to be _proper_ but not _fancy,_ much like his own jacket. He takes in the bright colours and traditional styles the Empire had done their best to hide or appropriate. These were fabrics Cassian once only saw on the streets, tattered, faded. Left to decay. But now, it's all held in the glorious light of Naboo's setting sun. Places where war and suffering had torn out chunks mended by new hopes, cross stitches of once warring societies united against the Imperial legacy. 

This is what they had all fought so hard for. Delegations from Kashyyyk, Mantooine, Chandrila, all in the same place, eating the same food. When physiologies allowed for it, of course.

Cassian perks at the sound of familiar voices. The Alderaani delegation. Planetless, yes, but anyone with a people was welcome at tonight's event. And the Alderaani not only had a people, but a voice. 

Leia comes into his peripheral vision moments later. Her dress is light yellow and deep blue, the very picture of the shadows and highlights that played across Alderaan's mountain chains at sunrise and sunset. She walks along the carpet, an aide and Threepio trailing behind her. As she passes between the windows and columns, she's alternatively engulfed in light and shadow, her very figure flickering like a distant star.

Cassian doesn't move to join her. Now is not the time nor place for dalliance - a moon was not meant to circle a star. 

Instead, a man from the House of Naboo breaks off from a group to fall into step beside her. Cassian can't hear their conversation, but he recognizes the man as Gregar Typho. A man who'd worked closely with Leia's birth mother. He wonders if he sees the resemblance.

A pang hits Cassian's heart. An unexpected burst of feeling. For some reason, he's remembering Bail. Perhaps it's Typho's skintone and stature, the way he's angled to face Leia. In an instant, the vision imprinted in his memory becomes what unfolds in front of his eyes.

Bail and Leia, walking by in deep conversation, the stone columns of Aldera's palace around them. Leia, animated, her face turned to her father's. Bail, looking slightly amused but deadly serious.

He always seemed so playful around her, at least in Cassian's eyes. But looking back, almost every word he'd said to her was an instruction for the future. Cassian and Bail had their disagreements, but between Mothma and Draven it was Bail who seemed to care for both the boy's well being and the galaxy's. To this date, Cassian still doesn't understand how the man pulled it off. The most anyone else understood of him was a two-dimensional image. With the perspective time has given, Cassian's unearthed many, many more. 

And here is Cassian, where he's always been, ever will be. This could be the past. He's done this before, hasn't he, leaned against a wall in the shadows. Watching a lifetime he could never have float by in swishing fabrics and Core tongues. 

And then there was Leia. For a long time, that was all they were. For a long time, even Cassian hadn't realized she'd noticed him watching them. Not until she'd started glancing in his direction. Cassian brushed it off as her training coming into fruition, that she was finally growing aware of who could be listening in the dark. 

Never in a thousand years would he have ever thought she was looking at him in the way he was looking at her now. She might've given him the appraising look of a teenage girl, but by the time Leia was old enough for such thoughts Cassian had swapped his Alderaani uniform for a blaster-rifle. 

Truth was stranger than his wildest dreams. 

She smiles at Typho, her lips traced in a pink just darker than her own natural hue, as if she'd kissed the petals of a milla flower. The Naboo loved their flowers. He's surrounded by the scent of them, the flowers painfully selected to be perfume for most species and undetectable to the rest, a mammoth effort the Empire never would've bothered with. They were everywhere. In the gardens, in Leia's hair, adorning every arch and table centerpiece. 

Cassian turns his focus to the stained glass windows and the histories within them. It's almost as if they're watching the proceedings, starlight passing through the eyes of matyrs long passed. Echoes of the past and future, reverberating in the present as glowing colours spilling across the floor and swallowing up profiles.

"Excuse me."

Cassian's attention returns to the source of the sound. Leia. 

"Certainly." Typho nods. Leia lingers long enough to smile kindly in response, and once he's left she turns and walks directly towards Cassian. He straightens. She's walking, yes, but she may as well be a bird gliding on one of Naboo's many lakes. 

He touches his hair reflexively, smoothing it out though he'd carefully combed it in the mirror, earlier. Leia smiles at him.

"Cassian," she says, by way of greeting. No more and no less. 

"Leia." He feels his eyes crinkle as he says it. And that was it, really. Neither had titles or formality cling to their tongues, and that was sweeter than any other hello.

Leia reaches up and fixes his collar despite it not needing fixing. "This jacket looks lovely on you." He pats down the front of his jacket and shoves his hands in his pockets. 

"You should thank the person who gave it to me," he murmurs, garnering a wry smile from Leia. He could tell her she looks lovely, but she knows she does. She has to be.

But the word means something else when it escapes his lips. Cassian, her long suffering companion when it comes to the arts of makeup and clothing. He's only learned it for subterfuge - though Leia, in all honesty, has only done the same. Even her comparatively simple dress today has great significance. The yellow of her skirt is that of the till, a blossom that grows in the garden the guests passed upon entry. Its petals are replicated on the blue bodice of her dress.

The flower is bountiful on Naboo, but native to Alderaan. A bridge between two planets, much like Leia herself.

"Thinking hard, Andor?" she teases, sweetly. 

"Aren't I always?" He twists his lips into a half-smile. "We haven't talked in a while."

"I know. I know you're there watching me sometimes, but I still missed you."

He takes in a slow breath. "So did I." 

What he sees reflected in her eyes is something else. She's thinking about kissing him. Cassian knows. He isn't reading his own thoughts in the quirks of her expression. That dangerous habit was weeded out by Rebel Intelligence long ago. He knows because he's seen her like this before. Her gaze opening, unfolding like a flower blooming in timelapse. Her lips part, slightly, just enough for Cassian to notice but not anyone else. His own heart thrums in anticipation, logic and experience telling him the next thing to happen is her lips against his. 

Leia's considering it with the heaviness of a woman living for the public eye. Casisan's contemplating it with the method of a man who lives to avoid it.

They both come to the same conclusion.

Part of him wonders if he's truly that good at reading her or if she's leaving impressions with the Force in his mind. They've talked about it in forgotten office rooms; under the cover of restless nights. She'd fretted all her persuasive abilities were a lie. Cassian did his best to tell her that just because she was a quick learner, didn't mean her skills were any less useful. She'd learned quickly from him, and after all, he'd done the same from Draven. There was nothing else to it.

It was the truth, and just the truth, and that was the sort of thing they both found comfort in.

It's with similar truth on her lips does Leia lift to her toes, swiftly kissing Cassian on the cheek without leaving a trace, a method Cassian has yet to decipher. She doesn't pull away, letting Cassian tilt his face towards her, a moon pulled ever so slightly towards a sun. He return the kiss on her cheek, careful not to let his hand rise up and disturb the single flower braided in her hair. 

Leia falls back to her feet, as if she'd merely greeted an acquaintance, not a lover. She's wearing flats, which he knows to be some of the simpler things that have ever held her up, though they were likely worth his entire wardrobe and more. Her smile, to other attendees, may be even simpler. But Cassian knows it to be genuine. Not as bright and broad as her silly, sleepy, mischievous ones. But just as truthful, and it is a sight that is more than enough for Cassian, when every moment feels like a gift. 

"You look lovely," he says, looking into her eyes like he means it. He does.

Leia's smile widens. "I've got wonderful news for you." She's grinning, now, as if she'd hit him in the back of the head with a snowball. Which is an odd thought, because Hoth was no place for snowballs and Cassian would have never instigated such a fight on Alderaan. Naboo has mountains, he knows, but he had no idea if they ever held up snow. 

He frankly has no idea where that mental image came from. It's nothing to puzzle over, not with the riddle Leia's presented him. He tries to remember what, of the many things Leia had done since he'd last talked to her, were worthy of such a grin. Plenty of them were, because it's Leia, accomplished politician and incredibly excitable, even with a war behind her.

Her eyes are bright, and her dress is swaying in the way of a child jumping up and down. She's nervous. Excited.

"You're trembling."

"I-" Leia works her mouth. "Cassian. I had to tell you first. Obviously. I didn't have the chance until now because I wanted to be sure. Maybe this isn't the best time, because we're in public and I don't know how you'll react, but I couldn't leave this to a comm."

Cassian's mind buzzes with a hundred different possibilities and now he finds himself falling victim to the same nerves setting Leia abuzz. 

"Leia..."

She takes a deep breath. Folds her hands in front of her. 

"Fest is habitable again."

Part of Cassian's brain tells him it makes sense. He'd seen the report in it's early stages but he hadn't looked at the numbers. Or anything else, really. Leia sent him the working summary out of some duty to some ideal she had in her mind. This wasn't in his purview. At most, the singular bridge between him and his birth planet was his mother tongue. It had a strong hold on him even now, still stubbornly clinging to his every word. His only usefulness in that sector, to anyone, even Leia, was to be a reminder of what happens when you let planets slip through the cracks. Loss of every kind, at every level. 

He didn't get into Leia's business, or the Senate's for that matter, unless they asked him. But it would be a lie to say he wasn't always paying attention to what fell to the wayside. It was for that reason, he thinks, the Fest report had completely slipped his notice.

The other part of Cassian's brain knows he's still blotting every mention of it from his mind. Even when Leia tries to help. After all, his homeworld was not a home to him. It hadn't been for almost two decades.

But now...

"Cassian?"

"That's wonderful." His throat is dry. Children making snowballs. Cooking over the hearth. Festiano in cold air. It could all come back. Not the same, not what he had, because everything he cherished was dead. But they could begin anew. Not start over, but pick up where the others had left off, patching up the chunks torn out by war. 

Not him. Cassian couldn't go back. Not with what all he's lost, but someone else... others could. Others who wanted to go home, even if it wasn't the same. 

"Cassian?" Leia's worried. He wonders if he looks like he's mourning. Perhaps he is. Maybe she thinks he's angry with her.

He shakes his head. "Leia..." His lips part, looking for traction on any word, any syllable. Everything fails him. He slips on ice.

"I don't know what I'd do, if I got Alderaan back but not my family. If we put the bits of rock back together but still had missing pieces. Maybe that's what Naboo is, to me. It's my birth mother's world, but without her. Without what she knew, what I could've had." She sighs. "And I suppose that's something like what Fest is to you now."

"Maybe. I'll find out." 

She nods. "We'll find out." And then she kisses him again, properly, this time. Soft, a whisper on his lips, but they're into it enough that he steps back, pulling them out of the shadows and into the light. Onto the red carpet. 

The setting sun filters through stained glass. The eyes of the past and future, watching them.

They pull apart as quickly as they came together, the flower in Leia's hair still firmly in place. For once, Cassian doesn't mind if anyone's noticed. They've been an open secret since Endor, after all. 

"We'll announce it tonight," Leia says.

"About Fest? Or..." he wets his lips. He's not sure if he's ready for the scrutiny of being the consort of the last Princess of Alderaan. But he could bear it all, for her. The Rebellion asked for far more. 

"Fest," Leia replies decisively. The voice that sent a thousand beings into battle. The voice of hope. "But we aren't going to hide in the shadows any longer."

Leia reaches a hand out to him. Cassian takes it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a oneshot.

Leia zips up her boots and steps over the threshold.

She's immediately bathed in sunlight. It's a beautiful day on Naboo, which would be a pleonasm if not for the occasional thunderstorms that swept across the atmosphere. For all the extremes Leia's experienced in just over two decades of galactic travel, a little thunder and lightning was nothing more than an inconvenience if she wasn't dressed for the occasion. Besides, she'd never had the habit of cursing rain. It would be a welcome sight for many communities on many planets. 

The basket in her hand swings as she shuts her door. Cassian's waiting for her.

He's standing squarely in front of a pillar, a lone sliver of shadow in a veranda basking in silvery sunlight. Stone benches litter the path, so many that Leia still isn't sure if his choice of location is deep seated discipline, a fear of being seen, or Cassian avoiding the difficulty of getting up from a seat. The thoughts are a smudge of clouds on an otherwise sunny day, but as soon as she's looking at his face, she smiles.

He returns it. A rare thing, if it was the past. But it isn't. 

"Look at you," he murmurs, doing just that.

She's dressed in pants and a shirt with a light jacket on top, as if she'd been trying to mirror Cassian's current outfit - the very outfit he'd spent years wearing in her peripheral vision. Pants and a shirt with his old jacket, the brown faded after so many washes and battles. It was a relic of some of the worst days of their lives and she completely understood why he found comfort in it. 

Another similarity, then, along with their clothes. Cassian's long abandoned the Alliance issue shirt and pants, though, thank the Force, but his colour choices have only marginally expanded. She was dressed in deep purple, a Naboo favourite. But Cassian's gaze is lingering on her footwear. Scuffed black boots that just pass her ankle, belonging more on Massassi Base than Naboo's lake country.

"Remind you of the old days?" she asks with a smile befitting sunny recollections childhood, not war. 

Cassian shrugs as they step off the veranda and begin to walk. "Yeah, when Senator Organa had to chase you down before your language lessons. I remember he had to bring your dresses for you, because you ran off wearing something like this."

Leia throws her head back as a wave of nostalgia hits her. "I _hated_ those lessons! I just wanted to learn how to use a blaster." She realizes it was a foolish desire now, and the reason for Cassian's distrust of her in their early days. She'd lost nights of sleep wishing she'd stayed a child longer and hadn't spent so much time trying to grow up too fast - for even a Princess was more of a child than a soldier. 

Cassian smiles at the memory, distrust lost over the distance of time and adulthood. "And now you're an expert at wielding both."

Leia sighs. "Only because I realized language was also a weapon. My tutors didn't help. Boring as bantha, those classes. It was all Papa's insistence, bless his soul. And most of what I know, I learned through watching holonet dramas." She laughs when Cassian makes a face. "Do you really think textbooks would've helped my conversational Huttese?" 

"Absolutely not. It's hardly passable as it is. I'd like to see you face the Hutt Council."

Leia theatrically rolls her eyes. "Just because you were the Alliance's envoy to Nal Hutta..." 

"There's a reason I was. And it's not because I have a fondness for Hutts."

Leia wrinkles her nose, turning her attention to the sprawling green fields around them and away from the mental image of Cassian being _fond _of a Hutt. "I don't think anyone does. Except other Hutts."

"You'll be surprised at what the galaxy has to offer in terms of preferences." He says it nonchalantly, a simple observation that, based on tone, would've fit perfectly in a report to Alliance leadership. 

"Mmm? And what's yours?" Leia arches an eyebrow at him.

Cassian looks over at her as they walk, his gaze soft and airy at first. Sparkling, almost, as if the light of Naboo's star is held in his eyes. Leia's expecting him to say something teasing, but then the look in his eyes begins to darken. Not cloud over, no, the weather today was far too good for that. It darken in a way that reminds Leia of Endor's forests, Alderaan's oceans. Depths that were at once mystifying and comforting. It evokes something deep within her, the calming sensation of coming home mixed with the thrum of adrenaline she'd associated with jumping into a lake or taking off in a ship.

"Cassian," she murmurs, suddenly glad they're on their own.

He presses his lips together. "I didn't say anything." 

"You don't have to, not when you're looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

Leia sighs, gaze darting away to the field around them. In the distance, large creatures roam freely. Shaak,their only companions. Their lodgings are a flat line on the horizon, close enough to stay any of Cassian's anxieties and far enough for Leia to shed any remaining formalities. A perfect place to stop. 

"I can see exactly what you're thinking."

"Oh, are you using a mind-trick on me?" One of Cassian's eyebrows ticks upwards.

"They only work on the weak-willed. Last time I checked, Draven didn't pick those sorts to be his agents." 

Cassian shrugs. "Maybe I've gotten soft around you."

"Maybe." She frowns when Cassian's lips quirk. "You're making_ fun_ of me."

"Oh, no," Cassian gasps, "I couldn't possibly make fun of a Senator."

"Please." Leia sets the basket on the ground and puts her hands on her hips. "As if we didn't spend our formative years making fun of Senators. And," she adds, pointing at him for emphasis, "you, of all people, hated the most." 

"I didn't realize you paid attention to how much I despised Imperial Senators."

Leia shakes her head. "We all hated those. You hated all the Core ones dating back to the Republic. Including my father, until you warmed up to him."

"Until he _kidnapped _me," Cassian replies, smiling as she kneels to open the basket. She pulls out a blanket and offers the other end to Cassian. They move apart, pulling the blanket taut, then crouch together. The checkered sheet floats gently to the ground. "No, I didn't hate _all_ Core Senators. I had some nuance. Maybe a little Core-prejudice, but could you blame me?"

None of this conversation is serious, Leia muses as she watches Cassian unpack more items from the basket. Both of them have an understanding of galactic politics. Obviously. But there was more to it, by virtue of growing up in the same war rooms and hallways. So painting each other with an incredibly broad brush, in a search for a good punchline, was absolutely fair. They were different in birth, but now, in this moment, kneeling together and pulling food out of a picnic basket, they're on equal footing.

"No," she replies, honestly, pulling out a bag of bread items left over from the very hearty breakfast the Naboo had set out for her. 

"Yes," Cassian continues thoughtfully, staring at a brightly coloured jar of jam, "even now, I think I like, maybe... four Core Senators. I'm not too sure about one of them, though." 

He looks up and directly at her.

She hits him on the shoulder with the bag.

Cassian fends off her attack halfheartedly, which only encourages Leia to attack more viciously. They're fake wrestling, and now Leia is really glad nobody else is watching. Not that she'd care, otherwise. Cassian might. It was the sort of thing that would give her Papa a headache, and Cassian had inherited that trait, somehow. 

"Still don't like that Senator?" Leia asks, after she'd managed to pin Cassian down to the blanket.

"I'd like her a lot more if she got off of me. My back-" Cassian pouts. 

"Your _back_,_" _Leia echoes, "is fine. I would know, considering-" She doesn't get a chance to finish the sentence when Cassian hooks his legs around her and flips them over.

"No fair," she shouts, pushing him hard on the chest.

"What's fair?"

Leia presses her lips together. For a moment, all she can feel is their breathing, the heat between them. Then she pushes up to kiss him. For a long time, they're just two bodies wound around each other, breaths skittering across skin, hair fluttering in the wind. 

"That's what's fair," she replies, when they've broken apart and finished unpacking.

Cassian purses his lips. "I hope you don't use this style of _negotiation_ on anyone else." 

"You make me sound like a bounty hunter, not a politician."

"You'd make a lovely bounty hunter." 

Leia makes a sound of approval, eyeing the dainty little flowers that dot the landscape around them. "I probably would."

"You'd be more competent. I've seen you with a blaster. Besides, if you can get Core folk to care about the Rim, you can do anything in this galaxy."

Leia skims her hand over the flowers peeking out from around the blanket they're sitting on. She can feel Cassian's eyes on her, dripping over her features, but with her head turned away from him, all she sees is her fingers running through the flowers. She purses her lips and begins to pick at them, out of impulse. As if she was still a little girl basking in the sunlight in Aldera's gardens.

As if Cassian was still the boy watching her from the shadows.

But he isn't. This time, he speaks up:

"You're picking the poor flowers." An observation, not an exclamation, but the fervor of it piques Leia's interest.

"Of all the things to pity-" Leia starts, grinning, because Cassian of all people _would._

"If you're going to pick them," Cassian leans over and takes a handful of blossoms from her hands. He hardly brushes her, and in the sun it shouldn't make a difference, but she misses his warmth as soon as he falls back into his seat. "At least use them for something."

Now Leia's faced with the reality of having to turn and face him. She does, and is rewarded with the sight of Cassian's features pinching together in focus as he deftly begins to thread the stems of the flowers in an interlocking pattern.

"If I'm a bounty hunter, I could see you tending to a garden somewhere," Leia says, picking more flowers, careful to pull the stems long enough.

Cassian doesn't look up from where he's braiding. "My father loved gardens."

Leia drops the rest of the flowers in a pile between them. "I thought Fest was too cold for that sort of thing."

"Yes, but we had native species, a long time ago before the factories ruined the ecosystem. Iceweeds. Wishblooms."

"Weeds? You barely had flowers and called them weeds?" Leia's forehead scrunches together as she examines the pile of flowers. It seems to be enough. Enough for what, she's not quite sure, but a nudge at the back of her mind tells her to move on. She does, reaching for the bag and snapping it open. 

"Well, we didn't call them weeds, the Empire did. Or the Confederacy. Or whoever the kark named them in Basic."

That was Cassian for you. Dropping bits of his past when you least expected it, much like the crumbs of flaky pastry littering Leia's clothes as she slices them in half. She watches him select some more flowers from her pile.

"They never did a good job of anything, did they?" 

Cassian sighs, fiddling with a stem that was too short to fit in whatever he was braiding. "They didn't."

"We'll do better, I hope."

Cassian smiles, a little too solemn for Leia's liking. "You already have." 

They sit in silence as Leia spreads condiments on the halved pastries. They're curved in the image of a crescent moon, following the path of most of the Naboo's creations and pulled right out of nature itself. The jam is artisanal, another common characteristic of her birth mother's homeworld - and her own.

"I'd like to see them." Cassian gives Leia quizzical look. "The flowers. Growing in all that ice and snow."

It made sense, Leia thinks as she studies Cassian. A world where flowers bloom int he harshest of conditions being the one Cassian calls home. Granted, he never called it _home._ He's only said that he's lost it. 

"You just might," Cassian replies, referring to the report.

"Yes, we will. And you'll take me." 

Cassian chuckles. "And how will I introduce you to anyone there?"

"Will they care?" Leia blinks. "Wait, will they recognize you?"

"Probably not. But they'll hear the way I speak and know... they'll start asking. And they'll get their answers. Then they'll all say _oh,_ _that's Esper's boy, that's Jeron's son,_ can you believe it? He's all grown and looks just like his father." His expression clouds over. "That is, if anyone who remembers my parents is still alive and on Fest." 

Cassian jerks his hands, an uncharacteristically imprecise movement that merely makes a knot in his handiwork.

Leia does her best to push him back into the light. "Would they approve? You bringing a Core princess to Fest, I mean."

"They'll think I'm a traitor, bringing more offworlders to the surface." 

"Will they?" Leia adds, concerned despite Cassian's smile.

He shakes his head. "Not when they know it's you. Not when they know what you've done for all of us." Leia lifts her eyes to hold his gaze, then reaches out and hands a buttered pastry to him. 

He takes it, taking note of how she'd added just the right amount of butter so it melts instantly in his mouth, sparing him the tooth-tingling sweetness of the jam. 

"I thought visiting with you would make my life easier, but they way you put it, I should go on Republic business."

"No," he says, after swallowing the mouthful. "They don't take well to offworlders sticking their nose in their ways of life."

"Understandable."

"But if you came unofficially, as my-" 

Cassian cuts off abruptly and chooses that moment to stick the rest of the bread in his mouth.

"As your what, Cassian?" Leia smiles innocently, twirling the butterknife in her hand. The flash of metal draws Cassian's eyes. 

"Ah, my friend?"

Leia tilts her head at him. "Do you sleep with all your friends?" 

Cassian's face reddens. "Some of the older Festians are nosy..." 

"Nosier than politicians and 'Net tabloids?" 

Leia watches as Cassian's shoulders slouch forward. She'd only meant to tease him - she wasn't at all doubtful of his conviction for her, for them, and her distance. She was almost afraid, sometimes, for him. And in that moment, with Cassian toying at the flower chain, she realizes she isn't going to get anything if she tries to back him into a corner and force it out. 

So she leaves it there, hanging in the air like Cassian's unfinished sentence. She thinks he's forgotten about it, until Naboo's sun has made more progress on its path through the blue skies.

By then, lunch is a memory on the lips. This is the most relaxed Leia's seen Cassian out in the open, with him lying flat on the blanket with his head resting on Leia's lap as she herself did some reading. For once, not Senatorial business, but a novel she'd saved onto her datapad years ago and never got around to finishing. One hand flicks through her datapad while the other threads through Cassian's hair, fingers stained purple by both jam and flowers. Neither mind. 

"Leia," Cassian starts, as if about to tell her something she wouldn't like to hear. "I need to tell you something." 

"Have I got jam on my face?" 

She swipes at it with the back of her hand.

"No." Cassian draws in a shaky breath. Sits up, so his face is slightly turned away from Leia's, but still comfortably close. 

"It's a good time to get married, Lei."

Leia's mouth drops open.

"Are you _proposing?"_

Cassian exhales slowly and grasps the flower chain, as if those flimsy green stems were offering him support. "I'm asking." 

Leia blinks. "Well. If you're ready... but there's still a lot of work we have to do. It's not even remotely close to being over." She's smiling as she says it, a teasing smile. "A lot of rotten work, long days and longer nights. We won't see each other for weeks."

"I know," Cassian replies. "That's why I'm asking you. None of this will end. We'll always be working. It's all we've ever known, all we can ever do." He closes his eyes. "But now is as good as a time as ever. We couldn't, before, it made no sense to do anything in a war, or even after, when the Empire still existed. When we were still reeling."

_ But if Fest is healing, moving on, maybe they will too._ Maybe he will. Cassian is, after all, sitting in an open field, with where enemies could swoop out of the sky, with nothing to defend himself except a butterknife.

And, well, the blaster sitting in his holster, on top of his folded jacket. But still. All of that, and with _Leia. _The scars of the past won't ever fade completely, but that didn't mean they still needed to be bandaged. They could have a future, just on the horizon where the tear-shaped creatures idly graze. They would just have to work towards it, every single day. And that's what marriage was, to Cassian, at least, from what he knew about it. He hopes Leia feels the same way.

"And maybe we still are reeling. Some days are worse than others. But I think promising to fight through whatever comes next together will help." When he looks at Leia, she's not smiling. But her eyes are alight, which means he must've said something right.

"Where do we start, Cassian?"

"We already have. When we won on Endor. When you told me about your birth family. When I told you about mine. That was the first step. I'm asking you if we can take the next." 

Leia smiles, finally. "If there's anyone I'd marry, it's you."

Cassian returns the smile, smaller but far more sweet in its bashfulness. Leia swears he's blushing. Blushing. She's never seen him colour with emotion, only cold and exertion. But not this, whatever this was. She leans over to hug him, but then Cassian moves suddenly. Hold something in the air. 

The flowers he'd been braiding. The one's she'd picked. Presumably to save them from being crushed by her, but then he hands them to her. 

"Shall we get married, Leia?"

She laughs, setting the flower crown on her head. "I think we should." 

("What about the witnesses," he asks, later.

"I know just the droids.") 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got struck with the idea of Cassleia marrying on Naboo, aided by that one anon who asked me for a proposal fic and now... we're here. Also, realized Cassleia is just me improving on Anidala so there's that to consider.  
The Hutt council thing is canon!


End file.
